PSN more popular than XBL

CES 2009 is in full swing, and Kaz Hirai has taken the opportunity to bring us all up to speed on how well the PS3 is doing – well, certainly in terms of ‘connected users’.

According to Hirai, 85% of PlayStation 3 owners are online in comparison to 60% of Xbox 360 owners.

We believe that the current numbers for both consoles work out as follows:

19.5m PS3 units sold = 16.575m PSN/online users

27.3m Xbox 360 units sold = 16.380m XBL/online users

That makes the PSN more popular than XBL. We get our numbers from aggregated NPD and other sales statistics, but even if they’re slightly off, nobody can deny the big difference between 60% and 85% online users.

Whether it is the attraction of the free PSN versus the paid-for XBL, the quality of the content or whether it is just that the demographic that buys the PS3 is more likely to be set up for online connectivity, the stats show that the PS3 is definitely winning when it comes to this aspect of the machine.

Of course, there is a chance that it is simply the fact that a number of PS3 users have multiple PSN accounts in different regions that is skewing the figures…